


Surrender

by becks



Series: Warrior [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
Genre: Cannibalism, M/M, Manipulation, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 16:34:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becks/pseuds/becks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow-up to Warrior. Will Graham returns to Quantico only to find himself struggling to solve a string of brutal murders. When Hannibal volunteers to help, can Will trust the man who betrayed him? More importantly, should he trust him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surrender

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written to be the sequel to Warrior; however, Warrior can definitely be read as a stand-alone text if you so choose. Think of Surrender more as an optional follow-up than a sequel.

**Part One: Profiler**

When Jack Crawford returns to Quantico, he brings Will Graham back with him.

He tries leaving Will alone for a few days in Sugarloaf Key, just to see what would happen. When he returns, he finds Will in the exact same spot -- sitting on the window seat in his bedroom, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. The microwave dinners that Crawford left in the freezer haven't been touched, the plastic wrap still adhered tightly to the edges of the containers. The shower hasn't been turned on either. There are no tell-tale used towels littering the floor; the nearly-empty shampoo bottle remains in the corner shower caddy. So Crawford packs a suitcase full of the bare essentials and books another plane ticket back to Virginia.

Crawford only intends on having Will as a houseguest for two or three weeks at most. But Will continues to stumble through his days half-asleep and Crawford cannot imagine sending him out into the world on his own. Instead, he becomes a pro-bono caretaker and files a change of address form with the postal service. 

Crawford tries talking to Will. He sits at his bedside for hours and talks about sports, television, politics, anything that might be of interest. But Will's completely non-responsive. So Crawford asks for his opinion on some of the cases that they've been working on at the FBI. He goes through case files and crime scene photographs, showing each document to Will. But Will doesn't even look at them, much less give any insight. During their second month together, Crawford decides that they might as well just confront the problem head-on. So he brings home newspapers that have articles printed about "renegade agent Clarice Starling" and "fugitive murderer Hannibal Lecter," hoping that they might elicit some signs of life in his damaged protégée. Will doesn't take any notice, not even of the photographs of his former psychiatrist.

Crawford remembers that there were always dozens of stray dogs sprinting around Will's property: drooling on the bedsheets, chewing on abandoned sneakers, pissing on newspapers in the corners. Will used to find them wandering around in public parks and by deserted roadsides -- abandoned by their families or runaways with leashes and tags. So as a last-ditch effort to get through to Will, Crawford brings home a dog from the ASPCA. Will wouldn't talk to Jack Crawford -- but he damned well would talk to Horace, the scruffy cinnamon-colored labradoodle. 

Crawford owes a lot to Horace who somehow manages to help Will pull himself back together. It's the little things at first. He starts dragging himself to the shower every few days. He doesn't wash himself; he simply lets the spray run over him. But it's a start. Other daily tasks follow: stuffing his clothes back into the dresser, dropping his plates into the sink after dinner, and even taking Horace out for a walk after dark.

One day, when Crawford starts talking to him, Will talks back.

And Crawford knows that everything will be alright.

That's around the time that the Sunset Slasher makes his first appearance.

It's an idiotic non-de-plume, Will thinks when Crawford first shows him the case file. Something that was obviously made up by a reporter whose deadline was too tight to come up with anything even remotely inventive. Therefore, "Sunset Slasher." Utterly laughable in its banality. However, there's nothing laughable about his modus operandi. They call him the Sunset Slasher because his first murder always happens at sundown -- and then he continues murdering until the sun rises the following morning. His first time, he's able to rack up seven women in a single night. While the murders aren't pedestrian (no shooting at random women with a .45), they certainly aren't set up to be artistic. This murderer cares more about quantity than quality.

Which goes against everything that Will's experienced before. Murderers generally take the time to appreciate their work, to create a lasting memory that they can revisit in-between kills. They stalk their prey, forming a personal connection beforehand. They choose a certain type of victim that has some symbolic meaning for them -- someone that looks like their mother or their daughter or their former girlfriend. They spend months planning the actual kill. They purchase their supplies, constructing a toolkit. They spend hours designing every second of the experience.

The Sunset Slasher's crimes are exercises in improvisation. He targets whoever wanders across his path at a given time. There's no connection between the women -- in terms of appearance or background or disposition. At 9 PM, he slaughters a lanky college co-ed on her way to sorority rush; at 11 PM, he murders a McDonalds cashier with four children, a bundle of food stamps shoved into her left pocket. He doesn't appear to have any contact with them before the attack. He doesn't bring the murder weapon with him; instead, he uses whatever he can find on-site -- construction tools, broken glass, kitchen utensils. There's no design here; there's only chaos.

Will doesn't like chaos.

"We don't have any leads," Crawford says one evening, sipping some lemonade made from powdered formula. "We keep going over the case file and nothing's jumping out at us."

"He's creative. Nothing's going to 'jump out at you.'"

"We would appreciate your insight, Will."

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"We want you on the team. Officially."

Will puts down the photograph that he's examining -- a blood-spattered mess of carnage -- and looks at Crawford. "I can't go back out there."

"Why not?"

"I'll fall apart. I don't have anyone supporting me this time around."

"You mean Hannibal."

"I mean anybody."

"I thought that's what I was doing," Crawford replies, glancing around the bedroom that's housed Will for the past four months.

"You are," Will quickly corrects himself. "I'm sorry. It's just . . . I need something else. I don't know what."

"We could get you back into therapy, Will. What about Alan? We could have him come down from Chicago. Couldn't Alan come down here and be your therapist?"

Will sighs and falls back against his pillows, staring up at the stucco ceiling high above him. He's never been good at saying "no" in cases like these.

This time will be no exception.

"When do I start?"

 

**Part Two: Therapist**

Will likes Bradley. He really does.

That doesn't mean that he's said a single word in the past twenty minutes.

They're in their first therapy session together. Bradley Miller, a pudgy little man with beady eyes and a double-chin, sits opposite Will. He's been distinctly hands-off this session; he opened up the conversation with the question "what's on your mind, Will?" and then let them both sink into a peat-bog of silence. He obviously wants Will to start the conversation himself, to choose to take that first step into a therapeutic relationship. The first step to solving your problems is admitting that you have problems after all. But Will just can't bring himself to open up.

It had been the same way with the previous seven therapists that they brought in for Will. When they'd brought in Alan Bloom from Chicago, Crawford had thought that Will would finally have an outlet, someone that he could talk to without judgment. But Will had shut down completely during their first session together. They had tried another five sessions before Alan finally recommended setting up an appointment with someone that Will didn't know. Maybe their friendship was hindering the therapeutic relationship instead of helping it.

Crawford had started scheduling appointments with the psychiatrists who worked for the FBI on a freelance basis. Psychiatrists who were brought in to draw up criminal profiles or to council agents suffering from PTSD after difficult cases. None of them met with any success though so they started looking for other resources. Crawford asked for recommendations from everyone that he knew, scheduling appointments with psychiatrists in Arlington and Washington, DC. But every one of them met with the same cold, detached silence from Will Graham.

"They can't help you if you don't want to be helped," Crawford grouses when Will comes home from his appointment with Bradley Miller, MD.

"Let's just look at the case file again."

At 9 PM, Crawford receives a call from the FBI. They'd just been contacted by the Boston PD. A young woman was found murdered, strangled with some internet cable taken out of a garbage can. Estimated time of death was 7:26 PM. That alone hadn't sent up any red flags -- but then another middle-aged woman was found just a few minutes ago, burned alive with a blowtorch from a nearby construction site. Two improvised murders in one night starting at sunset. Sounded like their murderer's MO. Thought they'd call and see if anyone might be interested.

Crawford's interested. Extremely interested.

It's an hour and a half flight from Washington, DC to Boston. In mid-flight, the team receives a call from a 911 dispatcher in Boston that another woman has been found. (Total body count: 10.) She's at Massachusetts General in critical condition. (Total body count: 9.) She probably won't regain consciousness until morning so that means no quick sketch to help them tonight. They can't get on the ground quickly enough -- but once they've arrived, they have no idea how to proceed. Crawford pulls Will aside almost immediately: "What do we do now?"

Will looks around at the assembled team, shuffling their feet in the proverbial sand until the murderer strikes again.

"I have no idea," Will responds truthfully. "There's no pattern here. He's not choosing them as much as he's taking advantage of opportunities. It's not the traffic pattern of the women we should be thinking about; it's his traffic pattern."

"So what's his traffic pattern?"

"No idea. I don't know a thing about him."

Crawford rubs the bridge of his nose, obviously discouraged. "So we're just supposed to sit around on our asses until he does something else?"

"Unless you have a better idea."

They don't have to wait long. A 911 call comes in around 1:45 AM. Another woman found outside of a nightclub in downtown Boston. A glass bottle broken and smashed into her face multiple times before her throat was slit with one of the larger shards. Will stares at the woman's mutilated face. Deep lacerations running up and down her cheeks, forehead, jawline. The tip of her nose has been completely sliced off; her left eyeball has been gouged out and hangs limply from its twisted rope-like stalk. "He took his time with this one," Will comments. "It's not like the other ones. He made this one especially for us. He knows that we're here."

"That's impossible. We just got here."

"This is an introduction," Will says, bending down to examine the gash in the woman's lip that so closely mimics his own disfigurement. "He's getting to know us."

If anyone on the team has any doubts about Will's assessment, they're erased by the next crime, reported around 4:25 AM. The crime scene: a middle-aged woman, a psychiatrist with an adjunct teaching position at Harvard University's School of Medicine. Her chest has been ripped open with a linoleum knife from her own kitchen. Her heart has been torn out and tossed unceremoniously onto a dinner plate. A silver-plated fork has been stuck into the meat.

"Is this even the same guy?" a member of the forensics team asks, tweezing fibers off of the carpet. "This doesn't match his MO at all."

"This is for me," Will explains. "He knows that I'm here."

"It's not . . ." Crawford doesn't even want to finish that question.

"No. None of the internal organs are missing. These crime scenes are . . ."

"Careless?"

"No, not careless. They're non-performative but they're not careless. He doesn't leave behind any fibers, footprints, fingerprints, secretions, witnesses -- nothing." Will approaches the dinner plate, the heart a mess of decimated arteries and shredded muscle. "Besides, Hannibal has surgical training. He would never leave anything this . . . sloppy. No, this murderer wanted to show what he knows about me. Wanted to establish a personal one-on-one connection between us."

"What does he know about you?"

"I'm not sure yet." Will looks up suddenly. "Anyone hungry?"

They grab McDonalds on the way back to the hotel at 6:29 AM. Sunrise. Will consumes two containers of Chicken McNuggets and then rubs his grease-stained fingers against the thighs of his jeans, leaving dark smears across the fabric. Possibly out of spite.

"Just heard from Massachusetts General," Crawford says, sitting on the carpeted floor of Will's hotel room. "The third victim's stabilized. They have her in the ICU. She should be awake in a few hours."

But Will's distracted by the photographs from the last crime scene. "It's not Hannibal," Will concludes, tracing the blood spatters with his index finger. "But it might be someone similar to Dolarhyde. Someone who had some sort of contact with him. Someone who possibly looks up to him, admires him."

"Do you think Hannibal told him about your relationship?" Will looks up sharply at Crawford. "You have to admit that the heart symbolism was a little heavy-handed."

"Hannibal would never be that indiscreet. No, this one was . . . speculating maybe."

"Does this upset you at all?"

"No. The eleven dead women upset me."

Crawford has to drag Will to Massachusetts General. He doesn't like dealing with "the live ones" as he says. Will stands quietly in the corner of the hospital room while the lead investigators question her. It's exactly as he suspected: her came up behind her; he covered her eyes with his (leather-gloved) hands; he didn't say anything. There's nothing that would give them any clue as to his identity. _No, this one knows what he's doing_ , Will thinks to himself.

He almost thinks this woman's just another dead end when:

"Did you find the man who helped me?"

"Excuse me?" one of the lead investigators asks.

"The man who helped me. After he . . ." she fades off, rubbing at the bandage covering her neck.

The investigator flips through the medical file. "He slit your throat with . . . part of a pipe?"

Will forgets how to breathe for a few moments. _This one was for me too._

"I guess," she mutters, looking away from the investigators. "I was lying there when someone kneeled down next to me. He covered my neck with something. His scarf maybe? And held it there until we heard the ambulances coming."

"Did you get a look at him?" Will asks, his voice choking in the back of his throat.

"No."

"How do you know it was a man?"

"He had large hands. Steady hands. If you find him, thank him for me. I think I would have . . . I _would_ have died if he hadn't been there."

Will manages to get into the waiting room before he sinks down into one of the chairs. Crawford's at his side in an instant: "What's wrong? What happened?"

"He's here."

"Who's here?"

"Hannibal." Will looks up at Crawford. "We're looking for someone who has access to police intel from multiple jurisdictions. Maybe someone with connections to the FBI. Look into support staff -- IT, administrative assistants, payroll and HR, someone who has access to personnel files."

"How do you know Hannibal's here, Will?"

"Because I need him to be."

When Will gets back to the hotel, the concierge has slipped a note under his door.

_I would have just used my hands but I thought you might consider that untoward. You took the time to reach for the towel after all.  
\- HL_

 

**Part Three: Confidante**

They return to Quantico the following morning. Will has Hannibal's note tucked into the back pocket of his jeans; he has not reported the document to Crawford or anyone else on the FBI's payroll. This is the thing that he gets to keep for himself. He uses his tongue to moisten the exposed gum line on the right side of his mouth, where his flesh has been tugged up by bundles of scar tissue. Damaged William Graham.

Will fleetingly wonders what happened to Clarice Starling. Then he realizes that he doesn't care.

He sits in the back of the auditorium while Crawford debriefs the rest of the team on the Boston homicides. He assembles a task force to bypass internal affairs and look for FBI employees who fit the profile. The task force consists of agents who have all been carefully screened by both Agent Crawford and Director Rogers. There aren't going to be any secrets or surprises on their end. (Will reaches once again towards his back pocket, skims the edge of the note. _He came back for me._ Even now, sitting in an auditorium at the FBI Academy, he knows that Hannibal's probably settling into a rent-by-the-month apartment in nearby Arlington or Washington, DC. That he's hanging up his couture three-piece suits, alphabetizing his library, and reassembling his spice rack in the kitchen. He inhales and he can practically smell the cinnamon in the air, wafting from a freshly-baked batch of sweet rolls. Comfort food for someone so desperately in need of comforting. They're cooling on the counter, still on the baking pan. Hannibal, whisking vanilla icing in a bright-blue mixing bowl, stands nearby -- white apron tied sharply around his waist, white button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves . . .)

"Will?"

"What?"

The FBI agents would probably chuckle at anyone else. But that's Will Graham sitting in the back of the auditorium. He's practically a legend around here. For his unbelievable aptitude as a criminal profiler. For his capture of Garrett Jacob Hobbs and Francis Dolarhyde and Hannibal Lecter. And for the sacrifices that he made for the good of the FBI. And by "sacrifices," they mean the scars distorting the surface of his face. The ones that they all try so hard not to look at -- or, even worse, they congratulate themselves for being able to look beyond his disfigurement at the genius underneath. Unthinkingly, Will lifts his hand up and rubs at his cheek, as if he could undo the scarring -- or the past that put the scarring there.

"Do you have anything to add?"

"No," Will says quickly -- and then realizing that he probably shouldn't be jumping to an answer when he's been daydreaming away most of the debrief: "I don't think so. I'll let you know."

"Okay, Will."

That night, Will asks Crawford to help him look for an apartment of his own. "I just . . . feel like I'm intruding here."

"You're not intruding, Will --"

"You've been hospitable enough --"

"It's really no problem --"

"But you need your space and --"

"Will, is this about Hannibal?"

Will visibly crumples under the interrogation. "I just want some privacy."

Crawford massages his temples, as if Will were a particularly irksome child taking years off of his life. "If he contacts you, you know that you're responsible for reporting that to the FBI, right? You can't just pick up where you left off with him. It doesn't work like that."

"I know."

"Has he contacted you?"

"No." Perhaps Will responds too quickly because Crawford doesn't look convinced.

"He's moved on; you should too. If he's here in Washington, then I bet he's brought Clarice with him."

Will somehow instinctively knows that Hannibal has not brought Clarice with him. But he doesn't tell Crawford that. Clarice was another one of his protégées; Will didn't want to distress him any more than necessary. After all, if Hannibal hasn't brought Clarice back with him, then she's almost certainly . . .

The Sunset Slasher attacks Portland that night. "He's traveling up the coast," Crawford comments, hauling himself into yet another helicopter. "New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine . . . He might cross the border and go straight up into Canada."

"I don't think so." Will grabs a headset and settles himself onto the seat. "This is an American crime. Brash, impulsive, unexpected. He doesn't have any interest in attacking Ottawa. They're not going to tell his story the way that we will."

There are four murders before the FBI even arrives. When they step out of the helicopter onto the tarmac at the Portland International Jetport, a local police officer comes jogging up to them. "Just found the fifth victim," he reports, looking for all the world like he has a story to tell. "You're going to want to see this one."

When they arrive on site, they can automatically feel the shift in tone between this murder and the others. Will almost has to recalibrate, ask himself if there might be a copycat on the loose. As they walk towards the hotel room, they take in the blood that's splattered along the hallway walls. The video cameras on this floor have been disabled; the murderer knew that he could make a mess sight-unseen. "He's setting the stage," Will comments, observing the the puddle of red blossoming on the carpet outside the hotel room door. "He's showing us what he can do. That he's not just good at improvisation; he's also good at carefully-planned execution. He wants our approval."

The door of the hotel room has been almost entirely coated in a thick layer of syrupy blood. The door handle is sticky when Will grabs onto it, after forensics have scoured the area for any prints that might have been left behind. He turns the knob and enters the crime scene.

Will doesn't understand at first. For as much as the outside of the hotel room was a blood-slick splatterfest, the hotel room itself is pristine in its whiteness. Carpets, walls, furniture, all without a single blemish or splotch. "He's showing off," Will comments. There are only two stains in the entire room. The first one is a message written above the bed in a messy permanent marker scrawl: Good to see you, Special Agent Graham. The second are the blood stains that can be found pooling on the bedsheets around the fifth victim.

"Wounds were all inflicted while she was still alive," the forensics expert says.

"Sweet fucking god," Crawford gasps.

Will doesn't understand why everyone in the room has turned to look at him. The fifth victim, female, has been dissected, deconstructed, dismembered. Her fingers have been severed, probably one-by-one; both of her legs have been removed directly above the kneecaps; both of her eyeballs have been gouged out (no sign of them anywhere in the room -- kept as souvenirs, perhaps?) and her mouth has been opened so that the investigators can clearly see that all of her teeth have been ripped out from the gums (no sign of them either). Will notices all of those details before he notices that the woman lying in the bed is his wife.

It's Molly.

"This is . . . " he begins, his hands shaking violently as he looks at the remains of the woman who wore a lily in her hair on their wedding day. "The murderer . . . he probably did this somewhere else and then moved the . . . the . . . the . . ."

"Will."

Will squeezes his eyes shut. "Moved the body . . . and made the mess in the hallway . . . but it would have taken too long otherwise . . . someone . . . someone would have noticed . . . someone should have noticed . . . the cameras . . ."

"Will."

Will looks up suddenly, turns to Crawford. "Has anyone seen her son?"

Before Crawford can respond, the Portland PD officer steps forward and says: "We found a boy in the room next door -- shot in the chest three times. The murderer probably used a silencer."

All of the color drains out of Will's face, leaving him as white as the walls and carpet that surround him. He sprints to the room next door. Crawford finds him kneeling next to the body, digging around in the lacerations for the bullets. He's managed to extract one using his fingernails, which now lies next to them -- a bloody shard of metal. "I need to get them out of him," Will insists, the tremors that course through his fingers so intense that he widens the entry wounds, ripping the flesh around the edges.

"Will."

Crawford tries to gently pull Will away from the body -- but Will turns and smacks Crawford, hard, across the face. It takes three FBI agents to finally drag him away -- and poor damaged William Graham is screaming and biting and clawing like some kind of rabid animal the entire time.

The package arrives the next morning to their Portland hotel. And although it's addressed to William Graham, Jack Crawford is the one who opens the box. God forbid the Sunset Slasher has forwarded another token of his esteem.

But it's just a disposable cellphone, preprogrammed with only one number. And a note:

_In case you need me.  
\- HL_

Crawford carefully puts the cellphone and the letter back into the envelope. He'll hand-deliver the package to the FBI crime laboratory as soon as they return to Washington.

When they get back home, Will goes upstairs to the guest room, locks the door, and refuses to answer for anyone. Even Horace's miserable whimpering cannot get him to budge. Crawford figures that he'll give Will some space. Eventually, he'll want to find the man who tortured and murdered his wife. But days turn into weeks. The Sunset Slasher attacks victims in Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan. His body count rises to twenty-eight victims -- more than three times the number amassed by the Chesapeake Ripper. And still, Will refuses to come out of the guest room.

"Will, you have to come out eventually," Crawford insists.

Will doesn't respond.

"He's going to keep killing women. Is that what you want?"

Will doesn't respond.

"Do you want to be responsible for killing someone else's wife?" Crawford shouts, trying to provoke any kind of response.

Will doesn't respond.

The next morning, Crawford goes down into the basement where the evidence lockers are kept. The crime laboratory processed the cellphone but the number was untraceable. They had thought about calling Hannibal, trying to lure him out by telling him that Will was in danger. But Crawford had ultimately decided against it. They had too much to worry about already with the Sunset Slasher racking up victims in every major metropolitan city. So they'd stored the cellphone in the evidence locker for safe-keeping until they could decide what should be done with it.

Crawford doesn't sign the evidence out; he simply sneaks the package into his briefcase, letter included, and goes back home.

Crawford leaves the package in front of Will's door with the microwave dinner that night. When he returns in the morning, the package is gone.

\----------

Will doesn't quite know what to do with the cellphone.

He wastes an entire day simply staring at it. The light-up green buttons. The smooth plastic screen. He spends a great deal of time reading the phone book, which only has one name listed: "Hannibal." He can't even count the number of times that he picks up the phone, positions his thumb over the "dial" button, and then stops himself. He fantasizes various scenarios that could happen. Perhaps Hannibal will chastise him for becoming a veritable recluse over the woman who left him. Perhaps Hannibal will provide him with insight into the murderer's mind. Perhaps Hannibal will confess to committing the crime himself. He never did like the idea of Will having a family.

Will doesn't let himself think for a second that Hannibal might say something sentimental.

Finally, around midnight, he realizes that he's being absurd and presses that "dial" button. In that instant, the bottom drops out of his stomach and his lungs flutter and collapse so that he can't catch his breath. He needs to press that "end" button. He needs to press that "end" button. And he's fumbling with the phone, trying to even find that goddamned "end" button so that he can escape from this moment when suddenly, on the other end of the phone, he hears a familiar voice, heavy with exhaustion and thick with a muddled European accent: "Hello? Will?"

There's none of the smug superiority in his voice that Will's come to expect. Instead, Hannibal sounds concerned. Perhaps he's also wasted more than a few days staring at his cellphone.

Will melts -- literally, melts -- into the mattress. 

"Hello, Hannibal."

"It's good of you to call. I was worried about you."

"Yeah." Will doesn't know what else to say to that. He cannot imagine ever leaving this room again. That's probably cause for some concern.

"I've missed you, Will."

"You never came to see me." Will knows that he probably shouldn't -- but he can't help bringing that up.

"I was . . . otherwise engaged."

"Clarice."

"Yes."

"Did you love her?"

"Yes."

Will doesn't know what he was expecting. Protestations maybe? Staunch denials and proclamations of everlasting devotion? Whatever he was waiting for, he's sorely disappointed by Hannibal's simple "yes."

"Is it because I look . . .?" Will trails off, unwilling (or unable) to finish the question.

"Not at all. I was rather petty in my last letter, wasn't I? The scars are quite becoming on you, Will. A man always looks better once he's seen battle."

Will walks over to the wall, cellphone tucked underneath his chin, and turns the full-length mirror around. He takes in the image of himself: he's still slender with those chestnut curls flopping into his eyes. His stubble has become patchy, interrupted by the scarring that shatters his epidermis. The jagged ridge of scar tissue across his cheek isn't half-bad, nor is the part that traverses his jawline. But the torn lip makes him look like an adult with a cleft palate and the missing part of his nostril certainly isn't doing him any favors. The nostril is perhaps what crosses the boundary from "eccentric scarring" to "full-fledged facial deformity." But still, with Hannibal on the phone telling him that he's "quite becoming," Will decides to leave the mirror face-forward for once.

"But you loved her?"

"My love for her in no way lessens or negates my love for you. I never stopped loving you, Will."

"I needed you . . ." Will's breath hitches and he feels like he's going to cry. Fuck, that would be humiliating.

"And I'm here now."

"Where's Clarice?"

"I could never allow her to simply exchange one surrogate father for another. I was only a replacement for Jack Crawford. Who was only a replacement for her own father, the dead nightwatchman. Clarice needed to learn how to stand on her own."

"Is she dead?"

"We won't be seeing her again."

It's an ambiguous answer. One that leaves him feeling uneasy.

"I want to see you."

"I . . ." Will hesitates. "I don't know, Hannibal."

"You don't want to see me, Will?" Hannibal asks -- and Will can tell that he's smiling. Calling Will on his perpetual bullshit. Because, deep down, Will is thinking: _Yes, I want to see you. More than anything._ But Will would have to be clinically insane not to be a little bit wary. After all, the last time he was alone in a room with Hannibal Lecter, he ended up with his insides on the outside. He looks down at the incision running across his lower abdomen, remembers the feel of the weight of his intestines, cupped in his palms. He doesn't want a repeat performance.

A knock on the door.

"Fuck," Will mutters under his breath. "Jack's at the door."

"He's the one who gave you the cellphone." Hannibal sounds distinctly unsurprised, almost as if he had been expecting that when he dropped off the package.

"Yes."

Another knock. More insistent this time.

"You'd best see what he wants. Call me tomorrow. Whenever you get a chance."

Will hangs up the phone the moment he realizes that he wants to end the call with "I love you." Because that would be wrong.

He doesn't think twice about opening the door.

"You opened the door," Crawford says, in genuine astonishment.

" . . . yes."

A silence falls between them. Crawford looks like he's considering something that's extremely distasteful.

"We need to find a way for you to do this safely."

"Do what safely?" Will asks, leaning against the doorframe and shoving his hands into his pockets.

"What do you think?" Crawford snaps. "I'm not going to have you running out every few minutes to screw around with a mass murderer. If you're going to . . . be with him, we need to find a way for you to do that safely. I'm not going to give him a second crack at you."

Will narrows his eyes skeptically. "What, you want to lock him up again? Give me conjugal visits? He'll skip town before he'll let that happen -- and none of us will ever see him again." Crawford doesn't think that he's imagining the threatening promise in Will's voice: _If you send him away, you will never ever get me back._

"No. Actually, I'm hoping that we can make a deal."

 

**Part Four: Negotiator**

It's the worst idea that the FBI Director has ever heard.

And that's saying something because he's heard some fucking awful ideas. Let a terrorist bomber blow up a stadium full of thousands of people to catch an underground cell. Let a bank robber "borrow" a few million dollars and track where the money goes over the next few months. But this one? Give a cannibalistic serial killer an official, on-the-books job with the FBI and let him fuck your all-star profiler? The worst fucking idea ever.

He expects this kind of idea from Jerome or Hall or maybe even Barnett (fucking morons, the lot of them) -- but from Crawford? Jack Crawford, the shrewdest hound to ever run in his pack? That's what concerns him. Because if Jack Crawford's the one pitching this idea, chances are it's not actually the worst fucking idea ever. And that means that it's only a matter of time before Hannibal Lecter has a fucking corner office at the FBI. Probably right down the hallway from Rogers himself. With his name on the fucking door.

Goddamn.

"This is going to be a PR nightmare," Rogers sighs, looking at the document in front of him. "I mean, fuck. What do you want me to say to the public, Jack? Remember that time the Chesapeake Ripper tortured and murdered nine innocent people -- and then fucking ate them for dinner? Well, over at the FBI, we've decided that we really need someone like that on our team. Hell, maybe we can make him our resident culinary expert . . ."

"Criminals cut deals like this all the time. There's precedent."

"Yeah, for a fucking Frank Abagnale who's biggest crime was banging a few airline attendants. This is the Chesapeake Ripper, Jack. This is fucking Hannibal Lecter. You don't give him a consulting job."

"Lecter killed nine people. The Sunset Slasher has already killed twenty-eight. I'm sure that I don't have to impress upon you the math of the situation."

Rogers tosses the document back down on his desk and leans back in his leather chair, looking like the weight of the world has suddenly descended on his shoulders. "We employ the smartest people in the world, Jack. There's got to be someone else in your department that can find this guy. Hell, I'll have the best officers flown in from every police district in the country to crack this case. I'll get you the top scholars from Ivy League universities. I'll go into the prison system personally and grill every major convict we've captured over the past twenty years --"

" -- and none of them would be half as good as Graham. He can get into their minds, Jay. He's our best chance at catching the Sunset Slasher before he kills another twenty-someodd people. And the only way he can function is --"

"-- with the help of the worst fucking therapist ever." Rogers hesitates, picks up a pen. "I'm going to lose my job for this, Jack. The moment this deal gets around to the President, I'm going to lose my job." Scrawls his signature at the bottom of the document. "You just got me fired, you lousy fucker."

"You're saving lives, Jay."

"Fuck you, Jack."

Crawford comes back that night, deal-in-hand, to discuss the conditions with Will. Hannibal Lecter will not be processed back into the prison system; instead, he will report directly to FBI headquarters where he will be tagged with a tamper-proof tracking device. The device will be monitored on a daily basis by FBI technicians to ensure that all technology operates correctly at all times. Lecter will have an office at FBI headquarters on the third floor in the behavioral sciences division. The office will not have windows and the door will be locked from the outside at all times. Lecter will receive only soft paper files to analyze; he will not have access to a phone or computer. The only people allowed to stay in the room with Lecter will be Graham and Crawford. The FBI will provide a townhouse adjacent to FBI headquarters for Lecter and Graham. The townhouse will be surrounded by an electric fence, which will be active at all times. There will be 24-hour security guarding the townhouse. Each room of the townhouse will be bugged with video and audio surveillance. At the slightest indication that Graham might be in danger, FBI agents have orders to enter the property and shoot on sight.

Will laughs out loud the first time he reads the agreement.

"It's like you want him to try to escape."

"Not exactly the response we were looking for."

Will passes the agreement back to Crawford. "You can't lock him up; look what happened the last time you tried that."

"We kept him contained for eight years."

"And then you lost him." Will glances at the cellphone sitting on the coffee table, the one that has only a single outgoing call logged. "Besides, you didn't keep him contained. He did this --," he motions to the scars covering his face, " -- when he was still in the psychiatric hospital. If Hannibal behaves, it's because that's the choice that he's made."

"Rogers was right, Will," Crawford sighs, taking a sip of brandy from a glass tumbler. "This is a fucking awful idea. If Hannibal decides to go on another killing spree, Rogers won't be the only one losing his job. Anyone connected to this will be hung out to dry."

"I know," Will responds, slouching down into his seat. "I don't want to seem ungrateful, Jack. I know that you're putting dozens of careers on the line for me --"

"Not for you, Will. I love you like a son; you have to know that by now. But I'm doing this because we need to catch this murdering son of a bitch. And I think you might be the only one who can do it."

Will leans forward, looking Crawford dead in the eye.

"I'm not sure that I can keep Hannibal under control," he says. "And I'm not sure that I can catch the Sunset Slasher."

Crawford leans forward, matching Will inch-for-inch.

"Get sure."

\----------

Will reads Hannibal the deal word-for-word over the phone that night.

Hannibal says that he'll stop by tomorrow afternoon to sign and surrender himself to the FBI.

"What are you talking about?" Will sputters, jumping up from his chair even though there's no one else in the room. "Hannibal, it'd be just like going back to prison. You'll be locked up in an office during the work day. When you're finally allowed to leave, we'll be locked up together in a townhouse enclosed by an electrified barbed-wire fence. You won't be able to go grocery shopping or go to the philharmonic or any of the things that you can do now. Why would you ever agree to this?"

"I'm worried about you, Will," Hannibal says simply before hanging up the phone.

The following day, Will is nothing short of a complete mess. Crawford stays home with him (along with an entire SWAT team just in case Hannibal has something planned). He tries, at first, to maintain the structure of an ordinary day -- making breakfast, watching TV, analyzing some case files -- but Will's edginess eventually rubs off on him. By noon, they're both sitting at the window. Waiting.

When a taupe Rolls Royce pulls up into the driveway, they both know who's driving. Hannibal has never exactly been the "under the radar" type.

"Sir?" The leader of the SWAT team on the walkie-talkie that Crawford's left on the coffee table. He grabs it and presses the speaker button.

"Stand down. Let him come inside."

Crawford watches while Hannibal gets out of the driver's seat. He's wearing a beige linen suit with a pale blue button-down shirt, the top button casually left undone. With his apologetic smile and half-wave at what was supposed to be the undercover SWAT team, it would be easy to forget that this same man murdered two police officers and two EMTs when he was escaping from prison. He escapes Crawford's line of vision for a few moments before the doorbell rings. Crawford turns to ask Will to open the door.

Will is staring at the carpet, as if he's counting the individual threads there. Crawford knows without asking that he left the window the moment he saw the Rolls Royce pull into the driveway. His hands are clasped together tightly, so tightly that Crawford can see the flesh at the edges of his grip turning a sickly shade of white. His lips are moving at a rapid-fire pace; he's saying something to himself but his words are so quiet and so hurried that Crawford cannot distinguish them.

"Are you going to open the door?" Crawford asks gently. Will shakes his head back and forth so quickly that whiplash seems inevitable.

With a much-beleaguered sigh, Crawford rises from his seat and heads to the door. Despite the fact that Crawford's spoken to Hannibal many times before -- been alone with the man in his office, even sat at his dinner table (with god-knows-what on the plate in front of him), he hesitates before turning the doorknob. He remembers the footage that Dr. Chilton showed him of Hannibal ripping out the nurse's tongue without any warning. Those images had replayed in his mind for months after he'd seen them. How could this man who'd seemed so cultured, so well-mannered, so infinitely patient . . . how could he have been that same psychopath with blood smeared down his chin, the heavy muscle of her tongue clenched tightly, possessively, between his teeth?

Crawford shakes those images out of his mind; they won't do him any good now. But still, he wonders what will happen when he opens the door. Will Hannibal smile politely and greet him -- or will he end up with half of his cheek spat out on the ground? He reaches out his hand and turns the knob.

"Hello, Jack," Hannibal smiles, as if seeing an old friend from university for the first time in years.

"Hannibal."

Crawford notices Hannibal looking over his shoulder, obviously searching for Will. Mildly displeased when he finds that Will has not come to greet him at the door. In fact, Will's nowhere to be found.

"I've come to surrender myself to the FBI, per the agreement that you had drawn up for me."

"For Will. Not for you."

"Of course. But I think you'll find that our interests overlap somewhat."

Crawford can tell that Hannibal's trying his best not to let his smugness show -- but the edges of his lips tug upwards ever-so-slightly, widening his smile. The unspoken words are clear: _You know what we are to each other_.

"May I come in?" Hannibal asks. Crawford stands aside and allows him to enter the house. The SWAT team makes to follow but a sharp hand signal from Crawford -- "stand down" -- leaves them standing awkwardly outside on the front lawn.

Hannibal looks around Crawford's study appraisingly. Crawford has no doubt that, in his mind, he's passing judgment on the various knickknacks and photographs that litter his bookshelves. Crawford tries to think back on the times that he was in Hannibal's home. Amidst all of the academic memorabilia and high-priced antiques, was there anything personal? Anything indicating that someone -- with family and friends, who had lived almost five decades -- resided in that apartment? The pencil-drawings perhaps. His boarding school in Europe. The medical school at Johns Hopkins. And once a sketch of Will Graham that had still been a work-in-progress. Perhaps he should have known then. The drawing had been hastily-done -- but there was an affection in the lines of his slouched frame, the shadows that scattered over his face. He could tell, looking at that sketch, that Hannibal genuinely loved Will.

He just hadn't guessed how much.

Hannibal wanders into the living room, Crawford following close behind. Finds Will still seated in his chair -- still muttering, still grasping, still staring at the carpet. Hannibal doesn't say anything to announce his presence; he merely squats down so that he's at eye-level with Will and listens closely. The words are still unintelligible to Crawford but they apparently make sense to his psychiatrist. Because Hannibal softly rests his palm on the back of Will's head -- bringing them close together until their foreheads are touching, until Hannibal's breath must be warm on Will's lips.

"I'm here now," Hannibal whispers, quietly enough so that it seems private -- even though he must know how closely Crawford's listening. He watches while Will's shoulders hitch and quiver with repressed sobs. He shakes his head even harder now, if that's even possible. His mumbling becomes more adamant, more heated.

"I'm here now," Hannibal repeats and then presses his lips to Will's. Will stops, his eyelids flutter closed, and for a moment, he's completely still.

It starts so quietly that Crawford doesn't even notice. A quiet sniffle that could be mistaken as congestion. Damp corners of eyes that could just be from allergies. But Hannibal seems to know what's coming. He grasps Will by the shoulders, providing something steady and solid -- a foundation. When Will collapses forward, Hannibal supports him and guides him down to the floor. Crawford suddenly feels like he's intruding, like he's become a voyeur in his own household. But he can't simply walk away and leave the two men alone. So he stands by as Will starts crying, sobbing and shuddering, and Hannibal holds him and strokes his hair and shushes him as one would a small child.

It takes about thirty minutes for Will to finally calm down enough to take Hannibal's proffered hand and be led up the stairs to his bedroom. Hannibal returns downstairs sometime later.

"I brought you here to fix him, Doctor," Crawford scowls, "not break him more."

"A crack in a teacup extends, Jack," Hannibal comments, straightening a framed photograph on the coffee table -- one of Jack and his wife on their 15th wedding anniversary. "It extends until the crack becomes a break."

"Well, get some fucking glue, Doctor." 

After Will has fallen into a somewhat restive sleep, Crawford and the SWAT team "escort" Hannibal Lecter to FBI headquarters. He's processed by an uneasy-looking agent who keeps her distance, despite the fact that there are three marksmen with semiautomatic pistols locked on Hannibal's forehead at all times. She photographs and fingerprints him (including the additional finger on his left hand, which Crawford never really noticed until now). Then he's taken to the FBI crime lab where he's tested for a variety of medical diseases and conditions. Crawford wonders if the technicians have heard about the nurse at the Baltimore Psychiatric Hospital. One of them, his hand trembling violently, misses Hannibal's vein numerous times, prodding the syringe hopelessly into the muscle. When Hannibal finally reaches for the syringe, the technician actually jumps back, stumbling towards the opposite side of the room. Hannibal takes the syringe and draws his own blood sample, handing the needle back to the technician who looks as though he's been offered a decaying muskrat left outside on a humid summer day.

After intake, the technology department fits him with a tamper-proof tracking device. Crawford asks multiple times if they're sure that tamper-proof means tamper-proof. Because if anyone could figure out how to get that damned thing off his ankle, it would be Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal sits there for a moment, leg outstretched, contemplating the chunky black box affixed to his ankle. He stands, watches the fabric fall on his left pant leg, sees that there's no trace of the monitor underneath, and nods his head once in approval.

"We're still fixing up the townhouse. For tonight, you'll be housed in the FBI reception center. We're having an agent bring all of your luggage here. Once your belongings have been processed, they will be released into your cell for your use."

Crawford looks sideways at Hannibal, wanting to see how the psychiatrist will take the news. But Hannibal just smiles amiably at the processing agent and says, without any trace of sarcasm: "Thank you for your hospitality."

 _Smart man_ , Crawford thinks. And, sure enough, all of Hannibal's belongings are processed in record-time and released into his cell. Crawford volunteers to stay with Hannibal for a while, in case he's regretting sacrificing his freedom for someone he's hardly going to see for the first few days. But Hannibal dismisses him without a second thought, telling him to go back home and take care of Will. So Crawford leaves Hannibal -- still dressed in his couture suit, sitting on a metal cot with a mattress that must feel a hell of a lot like corrugated cardboard.

Will's still asleep when Crawford gets home. So Jack crawls into his own bed and stares at the wall, pretending to sleep, until his alarm goes off the next morning.

When Jack goes downstairs, Will's already at the kitchen table. He looks like an absolute mess, in a stained T-shirt with tangled hair, but he's completely composed when he says: "I want to see him."

"You understand that he's still being processed, right?" Jack confirms. "You can only see him for about thirty minutes."

Will bristles slightly under the imposition. "I don't care. I want to see him."

"Okay, get dressed and we'll go after breakfast."

Will looks like he's going to argue but thinks better of it. Jack manages to get him to eat a quarter of a plate of scrambled eggs and drink a few sips of orange juice. It might not seem like much but, in light of recent events, Jack considers it to be a minor victory. Will has been looking much too thin and much too pale recently. As they drive to the FBI reception center, Will fiddles incessantly with his outfit -- trying to get the dirt and dead skin out from around the lenses of his glasses, trying to dampen and twist the frayed ends of his shoelaces into something resembling a point, and trying to shove his sleeves up to a relatively symmetrical length. Jack finds it . . . interesting, possibly endearing, the way that Will cares so much about Hannibal, about what Hannibal thinks of him.

When Will checks in at the front desk of the reception center, he turns to Jack: "I want to see him alone."

"Of course." Jack summons the guards who will escort Will.

"No, I want to see him alone. No guards."

"Will, the last time you two were alone together . . ."

"We're going to be living together, Jack," Will matter-of-factly states, clipping his access badge onto his shirt pocket. "That's the agreement. We're going to be alone together for the rest of our lives."

"But there are going to be cameras and --"

"There are cameras here too." Will points at the security cameras that reside in every corner of the room. He's right; there are security cameras littering every hallway, every corridor, every supply closet in the FBI headquarters. And there are trained agents monitoring all of the feeds. But it would only take thirty seconds for Hannibal to . . .

"I'll be fine," Will reassures him, walking alone towards the cellblock. Jack stands there for a long time, watching the spot where Will disappeared into something that he'll never understand.

Will enters the reception area and crosses straight to the cell where Hannibal, dressed only in his shirtsleeves, is sitting on the prison cot, reading a book on the evolution of fusion cuisine. He looks up as Will approaches.

"Will."

"I want to go in there with him," Will tells the guard who has escorted him. "I want to go in there with him and then I want you to leave us alone. You can monitor us on the live feed."

"It's not regulation, sir --"

"I don't care," Will responds. And, upon receiving a curt nod from the reception area director, the guard hesitantly unlocks the cell and allows Will to enter. He slips behind the bars without a second thought and tells the guards: "You can leave now." They both do as they're told. Will knows that they'll be watching them on-camera; for the rest of their lives, every moment they spend together will be recorded, viewed, and processed by an assortment of different agents. It's almost enough to make one celibate.

Almost.

Will slumps down next to Hannibal on the cot. "I only have thirty minutes."

"Oh?"

He turns to look at Hannibal. Their eyes meet. "Do you think you could fuck me in thirty minutes?"

"I don't especially want to."

Hannibal would have to be blind to miss the way that Will's lips twitch slightly downwards. The left side of his lips does at least. The right remains contorted into a half-smile by the scar tissue pulling his lip away from the gum line. Hannibal traces the half-moon roots of his teeth with his eyes -- and Hannibal's struck by the almost irrepressible urge to kiss him.

"By which I mean, as this will be our first time in more than a few years, I would like for it to be . . . something meaningful, maybe a bit more private." Hannibal glances up at the cameras monitoring all activity in his cell. "Or at least something with the illusion of privacy. You have to admit, Will, that a sexual dalliance in an FBI holding cell would be rather gauche."

Will smiles tightly. "I just want to be with you."

"You are with me. You'll always be with me."

Hannibal reaches over then and does kiss him. Feels the bumps of Will's scars against his lips -- the raised and hardened tissue rubbing over soft flesh. He presses his palm against his mutilated cheek, pulls him closer. "Never leave me again," Will whispers, his breath moist against the bow of Hannibal's lips.

They don't speak for the rest of the thirty minutes. They spend that time just touching one another, feeling that closeness that they never could through twelve-inches of bullet-proof glass. Hands drift over shoulders, across waists, underneath button-downs (but no farther). Hannibal ruffles his fingers through Will's messy curls, affectionately tugging on the feather-thin wisps of hair at the back of his neck. When the guard comes and tells Will that it's time to leave, he once again looks like he might argue. But a stern look from Hannibal stops him in his tracks. Without another word, he leaves the cell and heads out into the lobby.

"How'd it go?" Jack asks when Will emerges, tugging at his deformed lip with his fingers.

"I want to get back to work."

 

**Part Five: Employee**

The Sunset Slasher falls off the map for a while. Perhaps he received the message that Will Graham was recovering -- or perhaps, if he had some really close friends in the FBI, he received the message that Hannibal Lecter was working on the case as well. After all, it's one thing to be locked up in a federal penitentiary for your crimes, possibly sentenced to death by lethal injection. It's another thing to be tortured for hours, days perhaps, before being eaten by an experienced psychopath. Will refuses to leave his office at FBI headquarters. Most of the agents think that it's because Will has become obsessed with the case; they admire his newfound dedication to his work. Jack, meanwhile, knows that Will refuses to leave because Hannibal's right downstairs. Even if they can't see each other, it's enough for now -- being in the same building as him.

After four days, the townhouse has been wired and bugged and secured. The barbed-wire fence has been erected around the perimeter; the guard towers and booths have been constructed. Agents have been scheduled for townhouse detail. Jack privately talks to each one of them in advance, explaining that Will and Hannibal have a . . . somewhat unusual relationship. He makes sure they know that whatever they see on that screen shouldn't be discussed with anyone -- even the other agents on this detail. God help them if any of that video footage gets leaked to the press. (Thank god that Lounds isn't around anymore.)

Will insists that Hannibal be allowed to set up the space. Jack originally intends to only let him straighten up the stock furniture that has been installed in the apartment -- but Hannibal, suit uncompromisingly sharp (despite the fact that he's been contained in a holding cell for the past four days), seems so intent on making the space into a home for Will that Jack cannot bring himself to deny his requests for paint and rollers. Hannibal seems determined to fill the role of "provider" for Will, to be the one who will keep food on the table (although, as part of the agreement, food will be delivered to the townhouse for breakfast, lunch, and dinner -- compliments of the FBI Academy's cafeteria; Jack isn't quite ready to give Hannibal access to kitchen appliances, like linoleum knives, yet). So, despite the fact that the furniture consists of bulky wooden items from the academy dormitories, Hannibal manages to treat the walls with coats of color before Will finishes his work day. Jack recognizes the colors from Hannibal's former office: pale blues, deep maroons, creamy ivories. Jack can tell that Hannibal, his shirt sleeves rolled up and flecks of paint stuck to his forearms, wants to ask for so much more: crown molding, wainscoting, lighting fixtures . . . but instead, he simply thanks Jack for the paint and cleans himself up for when Will comes home.

Home.

Will, with his suitcase rolling behind him and his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, as he trudges down the driveway from the FBI Academy to his new townhouse. Who fumbles his key in the front door lock. Who slams the door behind him and drops his bags to the floor.

Hannibal walks out onto the second-story landing.

"So this is really happening, huh?" Will says, looking around the living room. "We're moving in together."

"Yes."

"We should probably make this official then." Will opens up the duffel bag and removes a champagne bottle. He pops the cork, watching while sticky-sweet champagne pours over his hand and onto the floor. "I'll clean that up," he assures Hannibal, sucking the alcohol off of the skin between his thumb and index finger.

"Make what official?"

"You and me. I'm not here as your guard. You're not here as my therapist."

"I think that's rather what the FBI intended when they drew up that agreement, Will." Hannibal flinches slightly when Will brings the champagne bottle to his lips, taking a deep swig. "Don't we have any glasses?"

"No," Will says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "We're not even supposed to have glass bottles. I snuck this in past the guards." He pauses. "You said it yourself once, remember?"

"What?"

Will starts walking up the staircase towards Hannibal.

"You're my partner."

"I said that the night before I disemboweled you." Hannibal glances down at Will's stomach, covered by his button-down shirt. But he knows that if he were to flick a few of those buttons open, he would find the puckered scar that runs across his abdomen. Covering the incision into which his intestines were tucked, after they were washed clean of the fibers and dust from the carpet. Yet still, Will comes closer.

"I forgive you." A few more steps up the stairs. "You're still my partner."

"And what if I can't guarantee you that I won't kill again?" Hannibal asks, arching an eyebrow skeptically.

Will pauses. "You won't kill again."

"I might."

"They'll lock you up."

"But Will, I'm already locked up." Hannibal begins coming forward now -- the snake circling around the mongoose.

"What you do," Will makes some vague hand gesture, avoids the word "murder" at all costs, "you don't have to . . . You're not a sociopath or a psychopath."

"You're so certain of that?" 

A tight little smile from Hannibal. The kind that isn't especially pleasant.

"I would know."

"How?"

Will is the one who takes the final step. Closes all of the spaces between them.

"Because I love you."

And then the two of them are stumbling towards the bedroom as quickly as they can, getting caught in half-shed articles of clothing. The champagne bottle lies forgotten on the landing, a puddle of alcohol blossoming out onto the floor. 

The first time Will thrusts inside of Hannibal, he almost ejaculates prematurely -- an embarrassing display of desperation and excitement. Hannibal, for his part, closes his eyes and lets the sensations wash over him; Will has always admired Hannibal's self-control -- and he's always been aroused by Hannibal's passivity in the bedroom. He glances at the camera prominently displayed in the corner of their bedroom, a constant reminder that they're always being watched, and wonders if any of the agents outside ever thought that Hannibal Lecter would allow himself to be topped (repeatedly, forcefully) by Will Graham. That Hannibal would be the one on his back, spreading his thighs, hooking his ankles around Will's ribcage. Will repositions and thrusts forward; Hannibal makes a barely-audible sound that's lodged somewhere between a sigh and a moan.

Will doesn't know what possesses him but he pulls out at the last minute, ejaculating all over Hannibal's chest and pelvis. He sits there for a moment, staring at the image of Hannibal -- pubic hairs dripping with milky viscous fluid, cock an angry shade of red and pressed flush against his stomach -- before he wraps a fist around Hannibal's cock and sets up a steady rhythm. When he finally orgasms, Hannibal softly hums his approval.

Will takes his semen-coated hand and wipes the residue off on Hannibal's cheeks.

He's about to go to the bathroom for a warm washcloth but Hannibal grabs him and pulls him down onto the mattress. "Leave it," he commands, the fluid already starting to dry -- tight and heavy -- on his face. "You have the right to mark me." He runs his hand across the scar tissue on Will's stomach, then reaches up to prod the tip of his finger into the fissure in Will's nostril. "I've already marked you."

Will grimaces but wraps his arms around Hannibal, coated in semen and thoroughly fucked by his cock.

\----------

The following morning marks Hannibal's first day as an FBI employee -- an actual employee registered with HR, recipient of medical benefits and a regular paycheck ($6.90 per day; Hannibal had been making $270 per hour at his psychiatric practice). He's polished and pressed when they're about to leave, to the point where Will wants nothing more than to toss him down on the nearest flat surface and fuck all of that pomp and circumstance right out of him. But he manages to restrain himself.

The two of them walk side-by-side down the driveway towards the FBI Academy, trying not to notice the three armed guards that are following them. While their kitchen has been left barren, they have been equipped with a coffee maker. And both of them carry styrofoam cups full of the hazelnut blend that Crawford left in their pantry.

Will walks Hannibal upstairs to the behavioral sciences division where Jack's waiting for them. "Any regrets about leaving my guest room?" Jack asks, only half-kidding.

"Yeah, I miss having food in the refrigerator."

"Maybe someday," Jack says -- but he's looking at Hannibal, not Will.

Jack shows them to Hannibal's office -- a supply closet that has been converted into a small work area with only a desk and chair inside. There's not enough space to walk more than three steps in any given direction. There are no windows; the door has three locks on the outside. Hannibal's face remains unreadable -- even as Jack gives him the case file for the Sunset Slasher and closes the door, turning a separate key in each one of the locks. Jack gives a set of keys to Will along with the stern warning: "Remember: we made this deal so that we could get you working again. We'd also like to get some input from him. So that means that the office is strictly for working."

Translation: do not fuck Hannibal up against his desk.

Will automatically blocks off his lunch hour for doing just that.

Will spends the rest of the morning in the crime lab. He's momentarily sobered when he walks in and finds a bulletin board erected with photographs of his wife. Remembering the taste of Hannibal's mouth as they kissed on the staircase, he feels an unrelenting guilt sloshing back and forth in the pit of his stomach for the next few hours.

FBI agents are known for their discretion -- but there's something about the sanctioned working relationship between a mentally-unstable profiler and his cannibalistic therapist that needs to be disclosed to one's closet friends. Who then, expectedly, feel the need to disclose to their closest friends. And that's the reason why Will feels the heavy weight of his co-workers' gazes on him the entire day -- and they don't even know the half of what goes on behind closed doors. They don't say anything to him; they don't ask him any questions. But he knows what they're thinking. _How could you?_

Will wonders that himself when he bends Hannibal over his desk and thrusts himself into that mind-numbing warmth. _How could he?_ And yet, how could he not? Hannibal ejaculates all over the case file, strands of semen pouring out over the crime scene photographs of his mutilated wife. Will tenderly kisses Hannibal's collarbone and then excuses himself to the bathroom where he promptly throws up.

 _You signed on for this_ , Will thinks, splashing water onto his cheeks. He stares up at his reflection in the mirror. _You signed on for this. You knew what he was. You sat there and watched while he ate someone alive once._

Will hears the squeak of the bathroom door swinging open, realizes that he forgot to lock the door to Hannibal's office. The steady beat of footsteps on the tiled floor. Will looks down into the pale porcelain of the sink.

"I am here as your therapist, Will. I'm supposed to be someone who's safe for you."

"You're never going to be safe for me."

"Then perhaps this isn't the best arrangement."

Will reaches out and grabs the sleeve of Hannibal's suit coat, twisting the fabric in his fist. He looks up into the mirror, at the reflection of Hannibal standing behind him. "Don't you ever think about leaving me again."

"I want what's best for you, Will." 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Will knows that he's being manipulated. But it doesn't stop him from saying the expected "You're what's best for me."

"Then talk to me. What's wrong?"

"I just . . . my wife . . ."

Will notices a slight clenching at the corner of Hannibal's mouth, something that wouldn't even be visible to someone who wasn't looking for it. "You feel guilt."

"Wouldn't you? He was targeting me when he went after her."

"What if he had come after me instead?"

Will chuckles. "Please. You can take care of yourself."

"Not always, Will." Hannibal takes a step forward, wraps an arm around Will's waist and pulls him backward so that they're pressed up against each other. "Better them than me."

Will squeezes his eyes shut, wanting for all the world to argue with what Hannibal just said. There was a child involved, for god's sake. But all he can say is: "Better them than you." His throat feels like a sluice as bile retches up from his stomach -- but he manages to keep his mouth shut and choke down the acidic fluid.

"Sweet Will," Hannibal murmurs, kissing the edge of Will's hairline. "It's going to take a while to adjust. You've been through a great deal of trauma. Just let me take care of you."

Will nods slowly, surrenders himself into Hannibal's arguably-capable hands. Just as he did almost a decade ago after the Minnesota Shrike. Hannibal gently tugs his other arm from Will's grasp and wraps it around his chest, enclosing him in the steadfast strength that Will cannot manage to produce for himself. "We'll schedule an hourly session every day," Hannibal says, nipping at the side of Will's neck. "If we both commit to this course of treatment, we can get you back to where you were before." Hannibal bites down a little bit harder and Will's breath hitches.

"I'm relatively sure that fucking your patient isn't ethical."

"Then we should both be relieved that my license was revoked."

Hannibal slowly loosens his grasp on Will and steps away. "I should get back to my closet. Jack will be concerned."

Will comes back to retrieve Hannibal around dinnertime, two styrofoam containers from the academy cafeteria clutched in his hands. He sets them down on the floor while he fumbles with the three locks on the door. When he finally gets the door open, he finds Hannibal sitting at his desk, jotting down notes with a felt-tip pen.

"Your murderer," Hannibal says, capping his pen and looking up at his patient. "This is an astute young man. You believed that he worked in personnel or something of the sort."

"Yes."

"That's too far beneath him," Hannibal says dismissively, tucking the case file into his briefcase. "You should be looking for someone . . . higher up." He pauses for a moment to examine the photographs that he's taped up onto his wall, specifically the one of the young woman found outside the nightclub in Boston. "This is . . ." he softly caresses one of the lacerations on her face, " . . . extraordinary talent."

Will isn't sure if he's feeling disgust at that moment or jealousy.

"I picked up dinner," Will says, perhaps a little bit too loudly. "You ready to go?"

"Yes, of course." Hannibal shoulders his briefcase and the two of them start down the corridor towards the elevators.

"Will!"

Will is momentarily tempted to keep walking. But as Hannibal pauses to indulge whatever Jack Crawford has to say, so must he. He turns around to find Jack being followed by three other departmental directors that he only vaguely recognizes.

"Will, we just got a call in from Nashville PD. Woman found bludgeoned to death with a broken lamp three minutes ago."

Will glances out the window at the sun disappearing right behind the horizon. "Is the chopper ready?"

"We have two of them waiting out on the tarmac. We're bringing everyone we have out on this one. We're not going to let him get away, Will." Jack puts his hand on Will's in his most reassuring manner; Will feels Hannibal tense slightly beside him. It takes him a moment to realize that Jack's trying to be comforting because this murderer, the one that they're chasing, killed his wife.

"Yeah, sure. Let's go."

Jack decides that Hannibal should come along in case there are any more surprises like last time. That's also part of the reason why two helicopters are waiting out on the tarmac. Because wherever Hannibal goes, practically an entire SWAT team must follow. There will be more armed guards on the ground when they arrive in Nashville. But Hannibal, to his credit, acts as if he doesn't even notice the detail following him and remains entirely focused on Will. 

As they're about to set down in Nashville, Hannibal shifts slightly closer and asks softly: "Are you certain that you want to do this?"

"Yes." Brief pause. "Why?"

"I just want to know that you can handle any more surprises."

"Surprises" here meaning any more dismembered friends and relatives.

"They don't have anyone else they can throw at me," Will assures him. He leaves the "except you" unspoken. As long as Hannibal's under the surveillance of the FBI, he should be safe.

Strange to worry about Hannibal's safety. Instead of worrying about the safety of all those around Hannibal.

When they set down in Nashville, they're automatically surrounded by a squadron of officers, both from the state and federal level. Will does his best to ignore them as he eases down from the seat, extending a hand to Hannibal. The moment Hannibal hits the ground, Will can feel the chill descend over the crowd. It's in the way the officers tense up their trigger fingers; it's in the way the FBI directors stand up just a fraction of an inch straighter. Everyone's suddenly at attention.

Hannibal, meanwhile, tries to straighten out his scarf, blown asunder by the rotating helicopter blades. Distracted by the disarray of his garments, Hannibal does not seem to notice that three dozen men are currently waiting for an excuse -- any excuse -- to shoot him.

"Anyone else?" Will asks the crowd.

They all look at each other, not quite knowing how to respond, when a Nashville PD officer steps forward. "Got another in the Gulch. Just called in."

Will nods. "We have a car?"

"You two are going with SWAT," Crawford says. "We'll follow in the police cars."

Of course they're going with SWAT. Will sighs and makes his way to the armored van, Hannibal following close behind. "If it wasn't for you, I'd be going in the police car too."

"Does it really matter, Will?"

"It'd be nice to look out the windows. I've never been to Nashville."

"Will."

Will takes the hint and stays quiet for the duration of the ride to the Gulch. When they arrive at the crime scene, an entire brick warehouse has been cordoned off. "Converted into lofts," the officer explains. "You're heading up to the ninth floor."

Will's relieved to see that there's no hallway spatter this time around. However, when they enter the apartment, he finds his relief short-lived. On the kitchen table has been laid a twenty-one course dinner: first and second amuse-bouche, caviars, both thick and thin soups, antipastos, intermezzos, petit fours, sorbets. Will's gaze flits over the dishes -- garnished with fruits and herbs and flowers, drizzled with sauces and creams -- to finally settle on the young woman that has been propped up in one of the chairs. 

Disemboweled. 

Brained. 

Partially flayed.

Will grabs the handwritten note off of the table:

_Thank you for joining us, Dr. Lecter. Bon appetit._

"Charming," Will grinds out through gritted teeth. Hannibal, meanwhile, has made his way over to the kitchen table and has set about examining each one of the dishes. Every officer at the crime scene stares at him as though they're expecting him to take a bite.

Hannibal delicately picks up one of the sugar-spun flowers framing a tenderloin. Will glances down at the woman's stomach to see where the meat has been removed. "Your murderer knows how to attend to his audience, Will. This isn't the work of a gourmand but he certainly did put forth a great deal of effort."

"Into what exactly?"

"Pleasing me. Pleasing us rather. He appears to be extremely fond of us."

"Great," Will sighs. "That's all I need. Another one."

"He's giving us what we want," Hannibal says, dipping his index finger into the béarnaise sauce and contaminating the crime scene.

"How can you possibly say that he's giving us what we want? Don't you remember what he sent _me_ last time?"

"That was only the gift wrapping," Hannibal smiles, licking the sauce off of his finger. "It wasn't the present."

"What was the present then?"

"There are three settings at the table," Hannibal comments, crossing around to stand behind Will.

" . . . This is a family portrait."

"Whose family?" Crawford asks.

"His. Ours." Will pauses for a moment, turns back to Hannibal: "You said that he's giving us what we want." A quick glance at the kitchen table. "You want . . ."

"I want anything other than that overcooked cafeteria food you were bringing home for dinner."

Will tries his best to accept the rather dismissive answer -- but he knows what's being implied from the aperitif to the digestif. It's only a matter of time before Hannibal goes back to doing what Hannibal does best. Will swallows hard before saying: "Let's order room service when we get back to the hotel."

The Sunset Slasher doesn't let them off easy that night. While there are no more personalized crime scenes, the murderer manages to stab, strangle, immolate, or gore eight more women. "Thirty-eight," Will counts, picking at a piece of fried chicken. He's lying in the middle of the overly-starched bed in their hotel room, indulging in some classic southern cooking. "You know we need to catch him soon, right?"

"God forbid we look ineffective," Hannibal says, coming out of the bathroom in a haze of steam, low-slung towel wrapped around his hips.

"This is someone who's done his research," Will says, lying back on the pillows and staring up at the ceiling. "He knows about us. Knew that we were together. Knew that you'd contact me after . . . what happened in Portland."

"Your murderer sees himself as a facilitator." Hannibal pulls out the spigot on the boxed wine that arrived in their hotel room, compliments of the FBI. He pours a little into a paper cup and sips, recoiling slightly at the taste. "In Portland, he was attempting to bring about our reconciliation. Tonight's display was a celebration of his success."

"Makes you wonder what else he's trying to facilitate."

Hannibal gulps down the remainder of the wine and allows the towel to slip a little further down on his hips. _Not what I meant_ , Will thinks to himself -- but since what he was actually thinking ( _he's trying to facilitate your imminent return to homicide_ ) was decidedly worse, he simply says:

"Come to bed."

Hannibal tosses the towel onto the carpet and climbs into bed next to Will. He's warm and damp and clean. Will licks the excess moisture off of his collarbone. "We should keep quiet. After all, we wouldn't want Jack to think that we aren't focused on the work."

"Of course not," Hannibal responds, reaching down and wrapping his hand firmly around Will's cock. Will arches up into his touch --

_I've brought these two back together._

_I've facilitated this reconciliation._

_This is my design._

"Wait --" Will presses his palm against Hannibal's chest, effectively stopping him.

Will glances around the room until his eyes settle on the brass vase that's been solidly affixed to the desk, a reedy floral arrangement springing over the brim. "You knew that they'd take anything breakable out of the room. But this . . ." He rolls out of bed and crosses over to the vase, examining the gleam of the surface. And noticing what could be one dull fingerprint.

He carefully lifts the flowers out of the vase, dropping them onto the carpet, and looks straight into the lens of the camera that's been hidden amongst them.

Within five minutes, their hotel room is bustling with FBI agents. "How did you know?" Crawford asks, examining the miniature camera poking a few inches out of the vase.

"If I'd worked that hard to bring two people together, I'd want to see the . . . um, fruits of my labor so to speak."

"You think that's what this is all about?"

"No, not at all. We probably weren't even on his radar until we both showed up in Boston. But he's been watching us since then."

"Pull the security footage for the entire hotel," Crawford directs one of the Nashville PD officers who's been loaned out for the occasion.

"He'll have already taken care of that," Will mutters to Hannibal, sitting down next to him on the edge of the mattress. "They're just going to process this crime scene and then we're heading back to Quantico."

"And then what?"

"We solve this case."

 

**Part Six: Destroyer**

When Will wakes in the morning, the sunlight streaming in between the plastic slats of the blinds, he finds himself wrapped tightly around Hannibal. He lays there for a few minutes, listening to the weak sounds of Hannibal's snores, rubbing the callused pads of his toes against Hannibal's ankles.

"I love you," he whispers.

Hannibal mumbles something unintelligible in response.

In childhood, there are monsters lurking under the bed, waiting to grasp at our ankles and pull us into the darkness. So we scamper across the carpet, jumping onto our mattresses and rolling under our comforters. We congratulate ourselves on having survived another night as the sounds of our parents watching television in the living room downstairs lull us to sleep.

In adulthood, there are monsters as well. Only now they sleep next to us.

Will feels the arms wrapped around his upper back squeeze tighter as Hannibal wakes up. "Will?"

"Yes?"

"You're awake."

"Yes."

Hannibal's fingers skim down the length of his spine until he reaches the groove of his lower back. "We were interrupted last night."

Will's cell phone buzzes as if on cue.

"We're being interrupted this morning too."

Hannibal reaches over to the bedside table, checks the caller ID, and promptly turns Will's cell phone off. "Jack Crawford takes up enough of your time." Hannibal crawls on top of Will, stares down at him. "I want you," he murmurs before biting down hard on Will's shoulder-blade. 

Will remembers the night that he discovered that Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper. Remembers how Hannibal had looked with flesh in his mouth -- the epidermis bursting open and peeling away from the muscle like a ripe peach, the blood dripping down his chin like sticky-sweet juice. Will brings his palm up to his shoulder but he finds only the sharp rectangular imprints of Hannibal's incisors.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Will," Hannibal says in all seriousness, even as he looks down at the map of scars traversing the surface of Will's face.

"Says the cannibalistic serial killer," Will snorts.

Hannibal continues to bite along the inside of Will's neck -- leaving a livid ruddy spot in the center of each one. The suck-mark. The difference between a sexual behavior and a fighting pattern. 

Or, in their case, the difference between claiming and consuming.

Then again, Will thinks, as Hannibal settles himself firmly on his cock, Hannibal doesn't have any reason to cause him harm. Their lives have settled into something that vaguely resembles normalcy. They're allowed to live out their day-to-day existence in their modest townhouse on the FBI's dole. Their food may come in styrofoam cafeteria containers and their working conditions may not be ideal but, overall, this has turned out better than Will ever could have anticipated.

As he ejaculates deep inside of Hannibal, his fists twisting in the bedsheets, he wonders how any of this could be possible.

Hannibal, surprisingly sweaty and unkempt, lays back down next to Will. Will thoughtlessly wraps his fingers around strands of Hannibal's hair, pulling them in every which direction. Hannibal passively allows Will to dismantle whatever remains of his stoic demeanor. He pointedly ignores Hannibal's erection that rests heavily against his belly. "You want to stay in bed for a little while longer?" Will asks.

Hannibal nods, wraps his own fist around his cock. Will leans back against the headboard of his bed and watches while Hannibal masturbates. He works his cock briskly and efficiently, trying to satiate himself with a minimum of fuss. "Slow down," Will directs, wrapping his arms around Hannibal and pulling him back into his lap. "I want to watch you." Hannibal allows his thighs to fall open, providing Will with a better view of the proceedings. He licks his palm once, his tongue broadly swiping over his flesh, before languidly fisting his cock.

Will has always been aware of this particular manipulation. An illusion that Will's in control of their relationship. Will knows that Hannibal could care less about what goes on in their bedroom; he could just as easily be roughly fucking Will into the mattress. But Will gets off on having Hannibal take his commands, gets off on Hannibal spreading his thighs underneath him, gets off on his semen dripping out of Hannibal onto the bedsheets.

Hannibal makes a soft little sound in the back of his throat, imitating someone who's losing control. Will nuzzles into Hannibal's forehead, watches his eyes drift closed as he curls the balls of his feet into the fabric. Hannibal smiles softly when he reaches orgasm, as pleased with Will's acquiescence as his own release. 

Just because Will knows the game doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy it.

"Clean yourself up," Will mutters, glancing down at the mess covering Hannibal's palm.

Hannibal brings his hand up to his mouth and licks off the semen.

"Good." Will presses his lips to Hannibal's now-clean palm, feeling the dampness of his saliva. He glances over at his cell phone on the bedside table.

"The FBI can wait," Hannibal sniffs, pulling the covers up around them. "Go back to sleep, Will."

Will does.

They wake up about an hour later, still tightly wrapped around each other -- as though they were afraid that the other might get away. Will fumbles for his cell phone and speed-dials Jack Crawford. 

"Will, where the fuck are you?"

"Sorry. Forgot to plug my phone in last night when we got home. Must have run out of batteries."

"Get over here now. There's something that you need to see." And then as an afterthought: "Leave Hannibal at home today. We'll have surveillance watch him."

Will hangs up the phone. "I have to go into work. You're supposed to stay here."

Anyone else wouldn't notice the way that Hannibal stiffens slightly. He looks mildly indifferent, more inconvenienced than anything, but Will knows better. "Hannibal," he says, with as much neutrality as he can manage. "Is there anything that you want to tell me?"

"Not at all, my sweet Will." Hannibal brings Will's knuckles to his lips and kisses them before sliding out of bed.

When Will reaches the crime lab, he discovers that "not at all" actually means "quite a lot."

The forensics team has bagged and tagged all of the dishes from the Nashville crime scene. Jack takes them out of the cold storage unit and lays them, one by one, on an examination tables. "Do any of these look familiar to you?"

"They're from the crime scene last night."

"Anything else?"

Will has never been especially good with food.

He watches while Jack brings over a black rectangular box, the word RECIPES engraved on a metal plate affixed to the front. "Does this look familiar?"

"Sure," Will shrugs. "It's a recipe box."

Jack waits.

"It looks a lot like our recipe box," Will mumbles, unable to look directly at Jack.

"I took it out of evidence as soon as we got back into town. Interestingly, all of the recipes for last night's buffet can be found in this box." He watches while Jack flips through the cards, removing specific ones and tossing them at the dishes: "Crisp lemon calf liver. Braised beef lungs. Parmesan crumbled lambs brains." Jack slams the top down onto the recipe box and looks Will dead in the eye: "I don't know about you, Will, but 'parmesan crumbled lambs brains' isn't _my_ regular Saturday night cuisine."

"It doesn't mean anything," Will says dismissively. "He's just done his research. He custom-made that crime scene for Hannibal; it's only fitting that he picked out dishes that he'd like."

"But how did he know that he liked them?"

"Hannibal hasn't been discreet over the past few years," Will scoffs. "Come on, Jack. He had an article published in _Bon Appetit_ \-- _after_ he was incarcerated."

"I know." Jack takes out a copy of the magazine and tosses it onto the examination table as well. "Nothing in there about parmesan crumbled lambs brains either."

"So he asked around." Will knows that he's starting to sound desperate, his voice pitched slightly higher than normal. "Hannibal was always having dinner parties. There are literally hundreds of guests in the Chesapeake region who were familiar with his cooking."

"You said it yourself back in Boston, Will. We could be looking at someone who's had contact with Lecter."

"Or he could just be an admirer. Hannibal has had his fair share of those."

"Someone like Dolarhyde --"

"What are you saying, Jack?"

"What if he's not just offering encouragement this time around?"

Will pauses. "What _exactly_ are you saying, Jack?"

Jack glances at the twenty-one dishes that surround them. At the blemished béarnaise sauce.

"What if he's giving directions."

Will lets out an extremely forced chuckle. "When could he have done that? He's been under FBI surveillance the entire time."

"He got to you while he was in solitary lockdown."

Will unconsciously brings his fingertips up to his lips, feeling the clef. "You have that little faith in your own staff?" Then getting to the real issue: "You have that little faith in _me_?" Jack starts to argue but Will cuts him off: "I'm in a relationship with him. We're sleeping in the same bed every night. Are you saying that I wouldn't know?"

Jack hesitates before saying, not unkindly: "You've always had a blind spot, Will."

The left side of his lip curls downward in disdain. "Your evidence is circumstantial at best. Call me when you have something more than just a hunch."

As Will walks out of the crime lab, he hears from behind him: "I've always known _you_ as someone to trust a hunch."

As Will steps out onto the lawn of the FBI Academy, the freshly-cut grass sticking to his sneakers, he begins to feel a churning sickness in the pit of his stomach. The kind of sickness that has always indicated a hunch. He backtracks to the Baltimore Psychiatric Hospital, to the Dolarhyde case. To the note that they had found tucked away in Hannibal's cell. To the classified advertisement in _The Tattler_. To the Jacobis in Birmingham. To the Leeds in Atlanta.

As soon as the FBI had found that second family, murdered and mutilated in their home, they had called Will Graham. Because who else was going to be able to solve the case before the next lunar cycle? They had brought him out of retirement. Dolarhyde didn't know him well enough to care. But Hannibal . . .

Hannibal hadn't thought about him in years.

No, wait, there had been something. A holiday card. Delivered to Sugarloaf Key. His stepson had been in and out of the hospital with chronic pancreatitis at the time. Will had come home for a few minutes to take out the dogs and check their answering machine. He had been flipping through the mail when he noticed the familiar handwriting on an envelope, a Maryland postmark in the upper-right corner.

The note inside the card had been unusually brief:

_Happy holidays. Thinking of you.  
\- HL_

Will had taken the card out to the backyard. He had flicked his lighter and set the damned thing on fire. When he had returned to the hospital, he hadn't mentioned the card to Molly -- and, to be honest, he had half-forgotten about it himself. He'd certainly never _responded_.

A few months later, the Jacobis and the Leeds were dead.

And Will Graham was on his way to an interview with Hannibal Lecter.

So there was a possibility -- a slight possibility -- that Hannibal had been in contact with Dolarhyde from the beginning and had encouraged him to act. 

And then there had been the classified advertisement directing Dolarhyde to their house in Sugarloaf Key. Hannibal had admitted that he had been trying to eliminate the competition . . .

And now his entire family was dead.

The Sunset Slasher. The first set of murders had gotten Will, depressed and resigned, out of retirement. The second set of murders had reestablished contact with Hannibal -- who had just happened to be at the crime scene when the only surviving victim was attacked. The third set of murders had taken care of Will's family -- and had led to the pre-programmed cell phone being dumped on his doorstep.

Hannibal's townhouse. Hannibal's consulting job. Hannibal's fucking medical benefits and retirement plan. All of them had come about because no one could catch the Sunset Slasher.

Who was being given step-by-step instructions from Hannibal Lecter himself.

Will slams open the door to their townhouse, ready to confront his so-called partner, when he remembers that the entire townhouse has been bugged with live video and audio feed. Hannibal walks out onto the second-story landing.

"Is everything alright, Will?"

Hannibal knows. Hannibal knows that Will knows.

"Yeah," Will sighs, closing the door behind him. "Jack's just full of bullshit today. Want to go back to bed?"

"Already?"

"I could blow off a little steam."

Hannibal smiles and goes back into the bedroom. Will follows him upstairs, stripping down and slipping under the comforter. He pulls the fabric up to cover both of them completely. "All of this because of a fucking greeting card, Hannibal?" he whispers fiercely, making sure to keep his voice low enough so that the audio bug won't pick up his words.

"What did Jack find?"

Hannibal doesn't even bother denying the accusation.

"All of the dishes from the Nashville crime scene were made using recipes out of that little black box you used to keep in the kitchen."

"They took my recipe box?"

"Hardly the point, Hannibal."

"Anything else?"

"Not yet. What else is there?"

Hannibal stares at Will for a moment before remarking: "You know, there's a video feed in this room as well. And we're being suspiciously still for two adults in a sexual relationship who've just gotten into bed together."

"Are you serious?"

Hannibal shifts positions so that he's straddling Will. "That's better."

"Hannibal, _what else is there_?"

Hannibal wraps his fist around Will's flaccid cock. "I imagine, now that Jack suspects me, that he'll start trying to track my movements over the past few months. If he's successful, he'll find that I've visited all of the cities that have hosted attacks. The next one was scheduled for New Orleans."

"My hometown?"

Hannibal lets his hand drop further down, tugs gently on Will's testicles. "I always wanted to see where you grew up."

"Unbelievable," Will sighs in resignation. "You've been under FBI surveillance though. So who's been committing the actual crimes?"

"Does it really matter?"

Another Dolarhyde. Another Gumb. He's had more than enough of those to last a lifetime.

"No, it doesn't."

He lays his head back against the mattress as Hannibal bends down and takes Will into his mouth. Without a second thought, Will tugs the comforter off of the bed, leaving them both exposed to the cameras. He looks directly into the lens as he ejaculates into Hannibal's mouth, mucus-like strands of semen dribbling out onto Hannibal's chin, and hopes that Jack Crawford is watching the footage.

 

**Part Seven: Mastermind**

It takes less than twenty-four hours for Jack Crawford to come knocking on their door, along with the security detail from outside their townhouse. "You're being detained," he tells Hannibal, forcing him down against the kitchen table while another officer comes up behind him, handcuffing his wrists together.

"May I ask why?" Hannibal inquires politely.

"Fuck you."

Jack waits until the security detail has cleared out before he rounds on Will. "You asked me to come back when I had more than just a hunch." He tosses a file folder out onto the table, the contents spilling everywhere. There are road maps with red sharpie lines, mapping out visits to all of the cities where attacks have happened. There are business cards from motels paper-clipped to the edges, names of housekeepers and front desk attendants sloppily written in the corners. There are photographs from security feeds of a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit, pumping gas into a rental car.

"This is more than a hunch, Will."

"Then where's the warrant?"

"I wanted to show you first," Jack declares, his voice tight in his throat. 

"You haven't showed this to anyone else?"

"No, I thought that you _deserved_ to know first."

Will looks away. "What are you going to do with him?"

"He's going into solitary confinement for the rest of his life." Then realizing that Will's just as much a victim here as anyone else: "I'm sorry, Will. I'm so sorry that this happened to you." 

He leaves the "again" unspoken.

"I'll just go back to Sugarloaf Key then," Will says, stuffing his fists down deep into his pockets.

"No," Jack responds quickly, probably remembering the decay that he wandered into months ago. "You'll stay right here in Quantico. We'll set you up with a teaching position -- same pay scale, full benefits. You can move back in with me or we can get you settled back into your home, if you feel up to something like that. Hell, I'll even let you keep the dog."

Will doesn't know when he makes the decision. "I need a drink," he says, his mind numbing itself against what he already knows he's about to do. Jack nods and sits down at the kitchen table. Will goes to the refrigerator and takes out two contraband bottles of beer. He pops the caps and leaves them on the kitchen counter.

He comes up behind Jack and, before he can reconsider, brings one of the beer bottles down hard against the back of his skull. Jack tries to stagger to his feet but he's disoriented and concussed; it's easy for Will to get an elbow locked around his throat and pull tightly, effectively cutting off his airway. Jack slams Will back against the kitchen counter, trying to dislodge him, but Will manages to keep his grasp. After about a minute, Jack collapses down to his knees, still futilely trying to throw off his attacker.

Will wonders if Jack even knows that it's him.

Will can feel the exact moment when Jack begins to die. He gradually relaxes back into Will's chest; his limbs become limp and flaccid. Will continues to strangle him for a good five minutes after he's certain that Jack's dead. As if the moment he lets Jack fall to the kitchen floor, everything about what he's just done will become real.

When Will finally sits back on his heels, the wheels in his head start cranking double-time. He has just murdered someone. Not just someone. He has just murdered the head of the behavioral sciences division of the FBI. He has just murdered the man who opened up his home to him, who climbed into the shower to clean him, who negotiated this entire fucking deal for him . . . _No, thinking like that won't help now_. Will needs to figure out what his next move will be. This wasn't premeditated and therefore he doesn't have a plan to work from.

The security detail will have taken Hannibal to the reception center. That means no one has been monitoring the video and audio feeds from the townhouse. Everyone will be able to see the footage on playback but hopefully they'll be long gone by that time. He needs to relocate the corpse to somewhere off-camera.

Then he'll need to find a way to get Hannibal out of the reception center. He stands up and starts rummaging through the file folder that Jack brought with him. Towards the back, he finds the paperwork for Hannibal's readmission into the prison system. The paperwork only has Jack's signature scrawled at the bottom; there's a blank space for the Deputy Secretary of the Maryland State Prison System. Will grabs a ballpoint pen from his pocket and dashes off a series of squiggles and loops that vaguely resembles a signature.

Even with the video feed rigged, even with the paperwork, there's still the issue of the tamper-proof tracking device locked around Hannibal's ankle.

This is Will Graham's design. And it's a fucking mess.

Will grabs Jack underneath his arms and drags him towards the closet in the foyer. They'll check here last; murderers don't usually leave their victims in the middle of day-to-day traffic patterns. They tuck them away in out-of-the-way locations like cellars and crawl spaces. As he closes the door, he catches a glimpse of Jack's eyes. They look like they've been dusted over with lint particles. Will feels the pressing urge to say something -- an apology, a eulogy, an indictment -- but the only sound that comes forward when he opens his mouth is a weak guttural sob, caught somewhere in the back of his throat. He closes the door and resumes his task.

He steps outside into the bleak late-afternoon sunlight. The electric fence has been left unlocked; the security post remains unmanned. Clutching the file folder, he walks over to the reception center. "I've got the paperwork for the transfer," he announces, approaching the front desk.

"Are you okay, Professor Graham?" the guard on duty asks. 

He recognizes her from his previous visits to the reception center, back before the townhouse had been completed. From the way she calls him "Professor Graham," he assumes that she was also in one of his lecture classes. He doesn't remember her at all from class; then again, he'd be hard-pressed to recall any of his students.

"Should have seen this one coming."

"Love," she shrugs, as if that explains everything. Maybe it does.

"Yeah. Love."

"Can I see the paperwork?" Will removes the signed document from the file folder. "We'll get a transport set up ASAP. Will you be going with him?"

"Yes."

"Will Agent Crawford be going as well?"

"No, he wants to do some follow-up with the motel clerks."

"He doesn't think Hannibal's going to talk, does he."

"Not at all. But if he was cruising the cities --"

"Maybe he brought the Sunset Slasher with him."

"Exactly."

Will's mildly disconcerted by how easily the lies come to him. As the guard picks up the phone and dials, Will glances into the cellblock. Hannibal's sitting on the cot, listening to their conversation. He doesn't look especially surprised to see Will there alone.

"How many guards are you going to need for the transport, Professor Graham?"

"He's not going to give me any trouble. We can make do with two -- one driving and one in the back with me."

"He's broken out of police custody before . . ." She looks hesitant.

Will beckons her closer. "I have some things to . . . _discuss_ with the prisoner. I'd prefer not to have an audience." She's straight out of a local police precinct; she knows the "five minutes alone with the prisoner" deal. He used to see this all the time down in Louisiana back when he was working with the NOPD. If anyone has the right to beat on a prisoner, he has the right to beat on Hannibal a little bit before he goes back into solitary.

Will's also mildly disconcerted by how easily he's able to manipulate this trainee. Another Miriam Lass. Another Clarice Starling.

"Okay," she agrees. He listens while she calls in the order for the two guards.

"Agent Graham?" Hannibal calling for him from the cellblock. Then in a much softer tone, almost hesitant: "Will?"

The guard nods, signaling for him to go back to the cellblock. She doesn't follow him, deciding instead to give them a moment of privacy. It's a rookie mistake.

Will comes close to the bars and glances down at the ankle monitor. "It's good of you to see me off, Will," Hannibal says, loudly enough for the guard to overhear the conversation. Then in a low whisper: "Topical lidocaine. Bone saw. Scalpel. Needle and thread. Bandages. Tourniquet and bone file, if you can find them."

"You're kidding me."

" _Now_."

"I'll be taking you back to the hospital," Will says, once again, loudly enough for the guard to overhear. "We have . . . a lot to talk about."

Hannibal looks directly at him. "I'm certain we do."

Will hurries out of the cellblock. "I need to use the bathroom," Will explains to the guard. "Don't let them leave without me."

"Of course not, Professor Graham."

Will jogs down the hallway towards the crime lab. The only one working appears to be Price who's in the middle of examining the victim from Nashville. He's elbows-deep in her intestines (or what's left of her intestines post-buffet) when Will comes into the lab. "Hartwick needs you in his office," Will announces, hovering in the doorway. "HR paperwork."

Price sighs, rolling his eyes. "Again? The joys of working for a government agency." He tosses down his surgical instruments, peels off his latex gloves, and starts out of the lab. "Make sure she doesn't run off on me," he chuckles, gesturing to the corpse on the examination table.

Will awkwardly attempts a smile.

As soon as Price is out of sight, Will starts rummaging around the lab, collecting the instruments from Hannibal's checklist. He grabs one of the duffel bags out of the staff cabinet, packing everything up before heading back to the reception center. The guards are waiting in the lobby. "All good?" he asks the trainee. She nods, eager to be helpful.

"He still cuffed?"

She nods.

"Key?"

She passes him the key. Not like they really need one. Incarceration has made Hannibal an expert at lock-picking. Will's not half-bad himself.

"Let's get on the road then."

"You planning on staying the night?" one of the guards asks, gesturing to the duffel bag.

"Maybe. There's a motel nearby. Grabbed some clothes out of my locker."

The guard looks down at the floor. He worked townhouse detail; he saw the security footage every night. He's under no illusions about what Will and Hannibal's relationship entailed. Not asking too many questions is his way of being understanding.

The guards remove Hannibal from his cell and lead him out to the transport vehicle parked in front of the building. Will hoists the duffel bag over his shoulder and follows them. As Will climbs into the back of the vehicle, Hannibal stumbles and whispers, breath scalding the edge of his cheekbone: "Speed dial 7." When they sit down on the benches in the back, Will removes his cell phone from his pocket and checks speed dial 7. He doesn't recognize the number. "Wait a second," he says to the guard who'll be driving the vehicle. "I just want to check in with Crawford before we get on the road."

Will calls the number. The voice that answers is female and unfamiliar.

"Are you en route yet?"

"Just about."

"I'll be waiting."

The line goes dead.

"Sure, Jack," Will says to the dead air.

It's about an hour and a half drive to the Baltimore Psychiatric Hospital. The silence hangs heavily in the back of the transport vehicle. The guard, the one who didn't ask questions, sits next to Will and tries not to watch the two of them. Will remains locked in voluntary eye contact with Hannibal the entire time, something that for him would be unthinkable with anyone else. Will does not think about Jack Crawford. He does not think about what's going to happen to the guard sitting next to him.

He unconsciously reaches his hand towards his left hip. Checks the firearm that waits in his holster.

The transport vehicle stops abruptly. The guard pounds on the barrier. "What's happening?"

"There's a truck blocking the road ahead. Looks like she's got a flat."

"She?"

"Yeah."

"Girl trucker," the guard snorts. "Now I've seen everything."

"Should probably help her change out her tire." Will listens to the door being unlocked, the driver hopping down onto the pavement. He's waiting for the gunshots; he's not disappointed.

"What the fuck?" the guard next to him asks, turning to Will for support.

But Will already has his firearm out.

Shoots the guard once in the forehead. Point-blank. Cleanly.

Will doesn't think about the guard lying on the floor of the transport vehicle, a smudged ring of blood encircling the edges of the bullet wound. Instead, he waits patiently for the back door of the transport vehicle to be unlocked. Hannibal does him the courtesy of not trying to engage him in conversation.

The woman wears a baseball cap, the brim tugged down low. He cannot see her face; he does not recognize her.

"Will," Hannibal says. "You should probably step out for a few minutes and get some fresh air."

Will follows Hannibal's gaze to the duffel bag.

"Shouldn't I stay?"

"Not for this part."

Despite the fact that Will feels an ethical obligation to stay with Hannibal, he can genuinely say that he feels no need to watch a back-alley amputation. He hops down out of the back of the transport vehicle and watches while the woman takes his spot. She shuts the doors behind her, probably to block out the noise. He has no doubt that Hannibal will maintain as much dignity and decorum as he can -- but he wouldn't blame the man for making some noise when the bone saw starts shaving away.

They're in a wooded area, about forty minutes outside of Quantico. Will kicks at some loose gravel in the road with his sneakers. This was a strategically-chosen location -- out of the way enough so that the risk of discovery would be minimal. Still, it's always a good idea to have a lookout just in case. He feels his firearm, still warm from recent use, pressed up against his thigh.

A muffled cry from the vehicle.

He's selfishly glad that he's not in there.

He allows his mind to drift to what's next. Hannibal was a fugitive for years -- one who managed to get in and out of the country despite being on the FBI's ten most wanted list. He has no doubt that as soon as those backdoors open, Hannibal will be taking control of their escape. That he'll facilitate travel to a country without an extradition treaty. That he'll secure false identities and working papers. That he'll locate appropriate housing for them. That he'll receive appropriate medical attention.

Will doesn't mind the thought of letting Hannibal take care of him.

He never has.

The backdoors swing open and the young woman, blood streaked on her forearms, jumps out onto the pavement. She reaches up and helps Hannibal limp out of the vehicle. His left foot has been neatly severed directly above the ankle and bandaged. Will doesn't have to see the precision of the wound to know that Hannibal, with his surgical expertise, completed the entire procedure himself. He smiles grimly at Will as he leans against the metal edge of the doors.

"Are we taking the foot with us?"

Hannibal shakes his head. "That would defeat the purpose."

"Why? We can slip the ankle monitor off and leave it in the back of the transport."

"The technology in the ankle monitor measures my transdermal blood alcohol level."

"The FBI wants to know if you've been drinking?"

"No, the FBI wants to know if I'm still wearing it."

Will glances at the open backdoors. "So she's going to drive the ankle monitor towards the hospital and make the FBI believe that you're still in custody."

"We'll have enough of a head-start to get out of the country," Hannibal confirms, gripping onto Will's shoulder. The young woman slams the backdoors and starts walking towards the driver's seat.

"Thank you, Agent Starling," Will calls after her.

The young woman pauses but she doesn't say anything, doesn't even look up. After a few seconds, the smallest of acknowledgements, she slides into the driver's seat and turns the key in the ignition. Will listens to the hum of the engine.

"We should start on our way," Hannibal says, looking at the truck that's still blocking the road.

"Yes, we should."

"Are you alright?" Hannibal asks hesitantly, his fingers pressing against the inside of Will's elbow.

" . . . Ask me tomorrow."

 

**Part Eight: Warrior**

William Graham lives in a fifth-floor walkup in Casablanca -- a corner unit with a balcony overlooking the heavy traffic of the street below. It's a throwback to another time with its wrought iron railings and arched doorways but, then again, he supposes that the antique colonial charm was a selling feature of the property. He spends a great deal of time out on the balcony, sitting on a patio chair, watching the world pass by beneath him.

He's sitting on the balcony tonight, listening to the hectic bedlam. The scent of roasting meat wafts out from the kitchen. Every evening, there's an announcement that they're dining on filet mignon or pork cutlets or chicken broth. He stopped listening long ago; he knows that they're not eating any of those things.

Hannibal steps out onto the balcony, apron tied tightly around his waist.

"Join me for dinner?" he requests, leaning against the railing.

"Not really hungry," Will shrugs. He's gotten leaner since they came to Morocco. He spends most of their meals picking disinterestedly at the food.

"For you, I made an artichoke ravioli with tomatoes," Hannibal continues.

"Still not really hungry."

Hannibal looks out over the Boulevard de Paris. Twin sets of red lights cruise down the street, leaving trails of exhaust behind them.

"I'm worried about you, Will."

"No need."

"You sit out here all day. I can't help but wonder what you're thinking about."

"You know what I'm thinking about," Will declares, glaring sharply at Hannibal.

"Jack Crawford."

Will remains resolutely silent.

"You did what you had to, Will."'

"No, I did what I wanted to."

Hannibal sits in the adjacent patio chair, brings his knees up and rests the soles of his feet against the railing.

"I wish that you'd talk to me about it."

"Yeah. I bet that you'd like that."

"Not at all," Hannibal lies. "I just worry that keeping all of your thoughts bottled up is having a deleterious effect on your health." He pauses before adding: "I could find another therapist for you if you wanted. Someone that you could confide in." The "someone who wouldn't report us to the authorities" remains unspoken.

"Are you making a referral, Doctor?" Will sniffs.

"You're hardly my patient, Will."

Will sighs and slouches down into the chair, holding the world at bay with his hunched shoulders.

"Killing someone must be the ugliest thing in the world," he declares. "The only thing worse is killing a friend."

Unconsciously, he brings his hand up to the scar running across his abdomen. The ones traversing the surface of his face have been reduced into nothing more than thin white lines. His lip bulges slightly and tugs upwards where the clef was revised by a plastic surgeon in South America. The flesh of his nostril looks like it's been pulled tight across the cartilage, like he's been subject to a few too many chemical peels. But the scars are less noticeable than they were before, which means that there's less of a chance of them being identified.

He doesn't like the revisions. They make his flesh feel plasticky. Like his face isn't really there.

"It can be," Hannibal responds noncommittally. "It changes you."

"For the worse."

"If that's what you choose." Hannibal leans over, brushes some stray curls out of Will's face. Will recoils slightly but doesn't force the issue. It seems irrelevant when he was balls-deep inside of Hannibal last night, fucking him hard against the kitchen counter. "It can change you for the better, if you let it."

"How could _that_ change me for the better?" Will spits out. "I held him while he died."

"No, you held him while you killed him. And no one will ever be able to take that away from you."

"I wish they could."

Hannibal grasps Will's hands, softly kisses his knuckles. "Oh, Will," he sighs. "You'll come to feel differently."

"I'm sure you'll try."

"You have a gift, Will. You reflect the minds of those who surround you." 

"A _gift_ ," Will sneers. "You sound like . . ." 

He can't finish that sentence.

Hannibal drops down to his knees in front of Will. "You came to me because you were caught inside Garrett Jacob Hobbs' mind. The first time you described slashing his daughters' neck, as if you'd actually done the deed, that was when I knew."

"Knew what?"

"Knew that I needed to have you."

Will pauses before asking: "How long?"

"What do you mean?"

"How long until I'm just a reflection of you?"

Hannibal doesn't answer. Instead, he stands up, starts to walk back into their apartment, but pauses in the doorway. "Come inside and eat something, Will." And then, when Will doesn't move from his seat: "It's a vegetarian dish."

Will smiles wanly but doesn't move.

"I love you," Hannibal says quietly.

"I love you too," Will responds thoughtlessly.

"Come inside?"

Will watches a clothesline strung up along a neighboring window. White linen shirts suspended by clothespins snap back and forth in the wind.

Will rises from the patio chair and, without another word, walks into the apartment.


End file.
